Photo processing in Adobe Photoshop. How to process a photo in Photoshop - first steps and simple tips Photo processing lessons in Photoshop

We take photos every day, especially selfies or portrait shots with the main camera. Some photos turn out perfect right away, while others just beg for improvement. For example, pronounced problem areas of the skin may be almost invisible in everyday life, but in a photo they are striking. Also, in most cases, the photos turn out faded and don’t seem as cool as they were intended. In this article we will tell you how to improve your photography using retouching and color correction. To do this, we will use the Movavi photo editor program.

Salute to everyone, dear subscribers and readers of PhotoCASA magazine! My name is Pavel, in this article I want to talk about the principle of processing a “lamp” portrait indoors without the use of studio equipment. Before I begin describing the processing, I would like to say a little about the process of obtaining the source. The shooting took place in the library, where almost all the halls did not have the amount of natural light necessary for a portrait, which I prefer.

This photo was taken on a Nikon D610 camera with a Sigma 35 mm f/1.4 Art lens. This was the very first shoot after purchasing my first DSLR camera. Before this I shot with an Olympus OM-D E-M5 mirrorless camera. I use Adobe for cataloging and initial color correction of photographs.
Lightroom, then I retouch and do more detailed color correction in Photoshop. I open the photo in Lightroom and get started.

Good afternoon friends! My name is Valentina Tsvirko, and I am an amateur photographer from Belarus. A few years ago photography came into my life and enriched it with new colors! At first I photographed landscapes and city views, but about a year ago I tried my hand at portrait photography, and this photography really fascinated me. I prefer to take close-up portraits, to show the inner world of a person, his soul. I learn from lessons from the Internet and books on photography and try very hard to improve my level of knowledge. Many thanks to PhotoCASA magazine for the opportunity to publish this article and please do not judge me harshly: I’m still learning)…

Thanks to digital photography, we bring back hundreds of photographs from our trips, but some of them are mercilessly deleted due to their poor quality. They turn out blurry, with a blocked horizon, or simply not effective enough. And we usually discover this only when we return home.

Don’t rush to get rid of seemingly damaged photos. They can still be saved in a simple photo processing program such as Movavi Photo Editor.

Greetings, dear readers of PhotoCASA magazine. In this article I will show how to make a rather interesting picture from a source file that most would move to the trash. I open the source in Camera Raw. I do the standard operations: exposure, calibration, sharpness (the bare minimum).
Next, I open the photo in Photoshop. I set a black point and make the photo lighter with another layer of curves. Next, I copy the layer (Ctrl+J), selecting the desired areas on it with the Lasso tool (L), and in several approaches I do a “content-aware fill” (Shift+F5). I mainly cleaned areas with gaps in the shadows.

Hello everyone, my name is Vlad Nelyubin. I'm a wedding photographer, and I want to tell you about a little trick that helps me in my work.
There are a lot of wedding photographers now, and you need to be able to always stay in the mix. That's why I give my clients small gifts that cost me little and give the newlyweds pleasant memories that will last a lifetime. This is the creation of a picture from a wedding or any other joint photograph.

Hi all! My name is Dima Begma, and today I will talk about the processing of one of my photographs.
A little about the photo itself. A Nikon D 610 camera and a Nikkor 50 mm f/1.8 lens were used for photography. The picture was taken in Dnepropetrovsk in cloudy weather with strong winds. Since we were filming on a pedestrian bridge, random passers-by often got into the frame. As a result of this, when processing the photo, I will need to replace part of the image with people with a similar empty area from another image. All photos
made with the same camera settings.

My name is Anton Montbrillant, and I would like to talk about how I process my portrait photographs.
I do the most natural processing possible without any complex tinting or painting, and I try to do it with fairly simple tools, which allows me to preserve beautiful and natural colors. So let's look at the original image. Photo taken on camera 645D and lens smc -D FA 645 55mm f/2.8 AL

Let's figure out what “High End Retouch” is. Retouching (French retouch – to paint on, correct).
Changing the original, editing the image. The purpose of editing is to correct defects, prepare for publication, and solve creative problems.

Hi all. My name is Ruslan Isinev. I'll show you how this photo was processed.
I'm using Photoshop CC2014.
I open the photo in Camera RAW. I do all the main work here, this is for me one of the most important tools in Photoshop.
We darken the background, lighten the model, thereby selecting the object we need. In this photo I’m already happy with everything, click “open”.

Hi all! My name is Dima Begma and today I will talk about the processing of this photo. I have quite a few 1:1 aspect ratio photos in my portfolio, and this shot was no exception.
In order not to lose the quality and resolution of the picture when cropping, I prefer to take such photos by gluing two or three photographs into one. All photos were taken with the same settings and the same focal length, I just moved the camera along the axis.
The ultimate goal of processing is to get a picture that will convey the atmosphere of the sunset as much as possible.

Hello, dear friends! My name is Dmitry Fevralev, and I am interested in artistic photography. What I'm most interested in is the atmosphere and subtext in a frame that can provoke thoughts, emotions, and perhaps even ideas in the viewer. That's why I love psychological facial portraits,
which can tell us much more about ourselves than might seem at first glance. Let me make a reservation that I am self-taught in photography.

Hello, dear readers! My name is Karina (Kerry Moore), and I do artistic and fashion photography. These two styles were assigned to me by the Internet audience. All my works were shot on Nikon D90 and Nikkor 50 mm f/1.4 G. Photography is both work and hobby for me. And today I will talk about my most famous work - a series of photographs “Azure” especially for PhotoCASA magazine.

Hello, dear readers of PhotoCASA magazine!
Today I am with you, Anna Zadvornova, with a new lesson in which I will tell you how to draw a portrait. So, let's begin!
First, open the original image.
Let's go to Curves.
Next Selective color correction, set the values:
RED: Cyan +4, Magenta –9, Yellow +7, Black –2.
YELLOW: cyan –13, magenta –3, yellow +3, black +3.

Hello. Today I will talk about processing one of my photos.
This photo was taken with a Canon 6D and a 135 mm lens, with a shutter speed of 1/1250 sec, an aperture of f/ 2 and ISO100, the time was before sunset.
Initially, I was faced with the task of making the photo warmer, making the girl’s dress blue, and also emphasizing the soap bubbles and rays of the sun.

Work began in Camera Raw. On the Hue-Saturation-Luminance (HSL) tab, the main task was to use color to make the picture more voluminous and change the turquoise color of the girl’s clothes to blue. To do this, in the Luminance tab, I moved the orange slider to the right, separating the girl from the background, and in the Hue tab, I changed the turquoise tint to blue.

Hello, dear PhotoCASA readers!
My name is Maxim Guselnikov and I would like to talk about how I process my photographs.
I prefer natural processing, without any complex special effects or collaging, while I try to use fairly simple techniques that, nevertheless, make the photograph more expressive.

Greetings, dear readers of PhotoCASA magazine! I want to tell you how the presented photo was processed.
1. Open the photo in Lightroom. We correct exposure, light and white balance.
2. Using color correction tools, remove redness on the face and hands.
3. Set the following parameters in calibration

Good day, dear readers of PhotoCASA magazine!
This time I want to talk about processing one of my photographs.
When processing, I use a single algorithm, but I never make the series identical, choosing my own colors for each shoot and placing emphasis on the most significant elements of the image.
My processing is always divided into two parts: color correction in Lightroom and retouching in Photoshop.
First of all, an analysis of the source code.

Hello, dear readers of PhotoCASA magazine! My name is MarinaPolyanskaya, in this article I will talk about the processing of this photo.
This photo was taken during a March trip to St. Petersburg. The inspiration and muse of the photo was the stunning model Anya Kubanova. It was decided to adopt the cat to highlight Anya’s natural beauty. Early in the morning we went to shoot on one of the St. Petersburg roofs. It was cloudy, very cold and windy, but both the model and the cat bravely held on, for which many thanks to them.
So, open the RAW file in Lightroom...

Hello, dear readers of PhotoCASA magazine, I am Stanislav Starchenko, photographer and retoucher. My specialization is collages, photo manipulation, the implementation of both my own ideas and orders from other photographers.
In this article I want to show the main stages and some secrets of creating my photo story “Transitional age”. The plot was based on a theme from the history of the Spanish noble family of the Borgia from the 12th to the 18th centuries. The picture shows a girl. Or already a girl? Sensual
a modest portrait on the wall reminds us of her innocence and purity, toys in the right corner remind us of her recent childhood and upbringing. But what about her look? What was she thinking about? Did she really feel the change and nostalgia for her childhood?
Yes: she turned 16. Fire in the fireplace, sparks... Transitional age!
The project of the work created in Photoshop includes more than 200 layers, so I will not dwell on each layer separately. I divided all the work into 10 main parts.

Since I grew up in a village, this topic is very close to me.
I like everything antique, imbued with the spirit of old age.
Before we start processing the photo, let's figure out what we want to do. Convey the atmosphere of the village and old age. Decide on a colorist for the photo. There are many color combinations, but I prefer the harmony of opposites. In our situation there will be light
in yellow-orange shades, and the shadows in blue-blue.
First, I open the RAW file in Lightroom.
Step 1: Basic Settings
Since the photo is very dark and cold, we make it warmer. To do this, I adjust the white balance. Next, I remove the contrast, move the Highlights down, and increase the Whites. I pull out the shadows a little and increase the clarity (Clarity) to add volume to the photo.
Now I lower the Saturation, and, on the contrary, increase the Vibrance. Vibrance is a very useful feature when working with portraits: it protects flesh tones from oversaturation and loss of shades.

At one time, computer photo processing was considered a rather controversial idea. The capabilities of programs like Photoshop for photo processing were used very carefully, almost secretly. So as not to end up being accused of a “not real” photo. But now photo processing is a completely natural process, and if there are disputes, it is only regarding what is considered the limit of reasonable processing.

Be that as it may, below are 6 basic steps to make your photo better using a photo editor. We can say that this is a template scheme for basic image processing. The steps are listed in the most convenient sequence, from first to last.

For example, sometimes it is worth cropping a photo first so as not to waste time processing areas that will still end up outside the frame.

You don't have to apply all the steps to every image. For example, if the image is well exposed, you may not need to adjust the levels.

The steps below are just to keep them in mind as a general outline of how processing proceeds. Upon completion of the work, we recommend clicking “ save as" and save the result under a different name. This way, you will always have the original photo if you need to change or do something differently.

For most of the actions listed below, you don’t even need Photoshop; almost any photo editor, even those built into photo viewers, allows you to perform these operations. This article, for example, uses a “light” version of Photoshop - Adobe Photoshop Elements

Step 1. Framing the photo

The cropping operation (crop) is available in any photo editor. When you select the crop tool, a frame usually appears on the photo, which you can drag by the squares on the corners or sides. This way you can choose what will be included in the frame and what will be left out of the frame. In addition, you can level the horizon by making a rotational movement in the area of ​​the corner squares of the frame.

Also note that in some editors, the cropping tool has a grid that divides the image into 9 equal parts. This is very convenient for adjusting the photo to the rule of thirds.

Step 2. Removing traces of dust

If you have a digital SLR, dust often gets on the matrix. Especially when replacing one lens with another. The easiest way to notice dust is in a monochromatic photo taken with a clamped aperture. For example, at f/16 and higher, dust will be visible in the sky as a blurry dark spot.

The tighter the aperture is, the clearer the spot.

Such spots in visible areas of the image can be removed with the Healing Brush tool (Lightroom, Photoshop, etc.) or with a Clone Stamp.

Step 3. Levels or curve

To make a photo more interesting, sometimes it is worth increasing the contrast, making the light areas of the image lighter and the dark areas darker.
The easiest tool to do this is to use the Levels tool, a more complex one is Curves.

Curves is actually a tool that isn't much more complex, but does require some understanding of what you're doing.

Everything is simple in the levels. In fact, you just need to look at the histogram and drag the leftmost (black) triangle to its left edge, and the right (white) triangle to its right. Or use the Auto Levels function

Step 4: Increase Saturation

The next step could be to increase the color saturation (Saturation). The picture will become more juicy and bright.
The most important thing here is not to overdo it. A photo with exaggeratedly bright flashy colors looks unnatural and cheap.

Step 5. Convert to black and white

Black and white photographs have always been valued in photography. Try converting the photo to black and white, maybe it will benefit from it.

It is worth considering that high-quality conversion to black and white images is not as simple as it seems. Therefore, for this purpose, it makes sense to use presets or ready-made solutions (plugins, actions, etc.) if the editor has them.

Step 6: Sharpening

Most digital photographs require sharpening. How much sharpening depends on the specific photo and its purpose. For display on a computer screen - one thing, for printing - another.

Depending on the editor, one or more parameters working together may be responsible for increasing sharpness.

Summarize

As already written at the beginning, the purpose of this article is not to tell in detail how to process a photograph, but to outline a typical scheme of sequential actions that is usually followed when processing a photograph.

Let's repeat all the steps briefly:

1. Crop and Rotate
2. Removing traces of dust on the matrix
3. Adjusting levels or curve
4. Increasing color saturation
5. Try converting it to black and white
6. Sharpen

Hi all! Today I want to tell you how to process photos in Photoshop for beginners or those who have just recently started learning this wonderful editor. It's no secret that sometimes photographs turn out, to put it mildly, not what we expected them to be. Either they are too dull, or too bright, there are a lot of pimples, or the sharpness is not of the best quality. Therefore, today I will try to tell you in an accessible language how to fix this.

Eliminate skin defects

First of all, I recommend looking at people, if there are any in the photo. The first thing that is important during processing is identifying defects. In this situation, I mean acne, scars, herpes (God forbid), from a flare-up, scratches, hair coming out, bruises, etc.

I don’t see much point in writing in detail about this, since I have a separate article for each case. I would just like to list a few tools that usually help eliminate defects.

• Patch. Select this tool and select the problem area of ​​the skin with it, then drag it to a healthy area by holding down the left mouse button.
• Healing Brush - Before using the tool, you need to select the donor area by holding down the alt button. And then you will need to paint over all pimples, blackheads, etc.
• Precision healing brush. This tool is also intended for covering up defects, but differs from its “brother” in that there is no need to select the donor area. It takes information from neighboring areas.

I described all these methods in the article about . You will see for yourself that it is not difficult.

Applying the Camera RAW filter: processing a photo in a minute

This method is insanely simple. Many photographers use the filter. I would even say it differently. They initially shoot in the format CR2, which is essentially higher quality. After that, when you go into Photoshop, this filter is automatically turned on.

But in reality there is no problem, since starting with the version of Photoshop CS5, filters have been replenished with a new brother. I hope everyone has been using a more advanced version of the editor for a long time.

The main feature of this method is that absolutely anyone can handle it, even a beginner and a complete zero, since everything happens in only one single filter, which only intuitively needs to be adjusted a little. Let's take this photo as an example.

By looking at the stories first, you can see for yourself what wonderful changes have occurred in photography. In my opinion, simply excellent.

Using the Adjustment Menu on a Single Layer

This method of processing photos in Photoshop is quite crude, but for beginners it will do just fine.

Now you can compare the changes. They may not be particularly large, but the processed photo clearly looks better. Of course, the absolute disadvantage of this method is that you cannot return to the previous step and edit it. But there is a way to do this, and I will talk about it below. Well, in general, look at the other functions yourself and twist the sliders. Perhaps you will find something interesting for yourself.

Processing a photo using adjustment layers

This method of processing photos in Photoshop may seem difficult for beginners at first glance, but in fact it is very simple, and any user can handle it.

Adjustment Layers

An excellent photo processing function that does not require any special skills. The essence of this method is that we apply each function on a separate adjustment layer, of which we can have a great variety. And in fact, it is much more convenient than the method we did above.

For example, I took a photo of a girl in rather faded colors. She herself is asking to be made brighter, richer and simply delight the soul.

This completes the work with adjustment layers, but we have to move on.

Selecting an area

Now we have to work with some areas separately, since applying effects to the entire image at once will not end well. For example, we need to make the sky brighter, more saturated and bluer, and if we apply everything to one photo, then our girl will also apply everything to herself. Therefore, let's do the following.

1. Select a girl with any of the . I will use , as I think it will work great here. We begin to highlight the girl. Don’t be too keen on accuracy, but the main thing is that the whole body is captured, or rather its naked parts and face.
   
2. Now, be sure to make sure that you are on the background layer with the girl, then right-click inside the selection and select "Copy to new layer".
   
3. After this, the cut out girl will appear on a new layer, which is higher than the background one. Your task is to place it above all others so that adjustment layers do not affect it. To do this, hold down the button on the new layer and drag it above the rest.
   
4. Now go back to the background layer and start selecting the sky. In this case, I decided to use the function. Select a brush, and then click on the quick mask button itself, then start painting over the entire sky, remembering to change the brush size to get into more difficult to reach places.
   
5. After that, click on the quick mask again to remove the selection. Next we'll need to invert the selection so that we're working with the sky and not what's around it. To do this, press the key combination SHIFT+CTRL+I.
   
6. Next, you will need to add some saturation. To do this, without removing the selection, press the key combination CTRL+U, then move the “Saturation” slider a couple of tens of units to the right. You can also play with the brightness until you reach the most interesting shade.
   
7. Now let's get back to the girl. It was not for nothing that we endured it. Since we moved it from under the adjustment layers, it again became pale, as it originally looked. But if this is not done, then on the contrary, she will be too dark. And now we can find the right balance. To do this, our copy of the girl needs to reduce the opacity until you think it’s enough. In my case, 33 percent is enough.
   

Bottom line

After studying several different methods, I came to the conclusion that if you want to make quick and high-quality processing, then it will be enough to use the Camera RAW filter in Photoshop. It showed itself to be excellent, and the time it takes to process a photo, even for novice users, actually takes 1-2 minutes.

The only thing I wouldn’t recommend is creating an action for this and letting the photos change in a stream. Even if the pictures were taken by one photographer on the same day, the settings that you made for one picture may not be suitable for them. I know that many unscrupulous wedding photographers do exactly this to save time. You see, they don’t want to process 300-400 photos one at a time.

But if you really want to engage in high-quality photo processing, because you are drawn to it, then I highly recommend checking out these cool video tutorials, which clearly explains how to use Photoshop for awesome photo processing.

And if you are new to Photoshop, then the first thing I recommend is to study this course. Everything is chewed literally down to the smallest detail and looks simply in one breath. . And the main thing is that everything is told in human language, so you don’t even want to be distracted.

As you can see, there is nothing complicated. Therefore, no one should have any questions about how to process photos in Photoshop for beginners. At least I am sure that these tools will be enough for you.

Well, this is where I end my article. I hope you liked it. Don't forget to subscribe to my blog updates, and also follow the news in my public pages. Good luck to you. Bye bye!

Best regards, Dmitry Kostin.

Here is a series of lessons that teach you how to use the Photoshop graphic editor - an incredibly popular and indispensable tool in web design, with the help of which not only buttons, banners and logos, but even entire layouts are created for the site. The design of almost any website you visited was originally drawn in Photoshop, so knowledge of this program will definitely be useful for a webmaster, although the skills of image processing and creating your own drawings will also not harm a simple PC user. Digitizing photographs, retouching old photographs, creating postcards and collages - this is only the beginning of a long list of useful actions that the editor allows you to perform, and a series of lessons will help you get used to it.

Add this page to your bookmarks so you don’t lose the table of contents and consistently study article after article, learning more and more new techniques for working in Photoshop.

But what will you learn in these lessons?

• 1 Getting started in Photoshop - quick selection and fill

  Here you will get acquainted with the program interface, find out what the main interface elements are for, learn how to create documents and save them, and master selecting areas on the canvas. Also from the lesson you will understand how to fill areas with color, and you will understand the principles of working with the program. After mastering the information, you will learn how to perform simple actions and will be able to independently explore other editor tools.

• 2 Layers and text
  

  All Photoshop images are built on layers. This is why editing in the program is so convenient. The lesson will tell you what layers are, why they are needed and how to work with them. In addition, it describes techniques for creating and processing inscriptions, as well as moving objects located on the canvas. After completing this lesson, processing multilayer documents will not be a problem for you.

• 3 Filters
  

  You will get acquainted with a huge library of picture-changing scripts. The editor's filters can not only give the finished image a particular effect, but even create new objects and frame the photo.

• 4 Working with images
  

  The article provides the basics of processing existing graphic files. Editing several images at once, moving objects from one picture to another, changing sizes and removing unnecessary parts - this is just an incomplete list of lesson topics.

• 5 Transformation
  

  The lesson will teach you how to scale image elements, change proportions, tilt, distort and deform them

• 6 Drawing - brush and pencil
  

  The first in a series of articles talking about tools for creating your own masterpieces. For a long time now, computer technology has developed to the point that it makes it possible to imitate drawing on paper. You will learn to create using a virtual pencil and brush - sketches and watercolor paintings can now be easily drawn and distributed on electronic media, making an unlimited number of copies and without worrying about the safety of your work.

• 7 Drawing - shapes
  

  Creating objects by hand is one thing, but accuracy and speed are sometimes paramount. The lesson talks about tools that can be used to create perfectly even geometric shapes of given sizes in just a few clicks. From a simple square to an ellipse, a star, and even a musical note, the article covers everything.

• 8 Drawing - outlines and bitmaps
  

  You will remember once and for all how a vector differs from a raster, what the pros and cons of both approaches are, and you will also learn why shape contours are needed in Photoshop and what the pixel mode does.

• 9 Drawing - Pen tool
  

  Continuing to work with contours, we study the tools of the Pen group. Purpose, method of application, description of parameters, and as a result you will learn to draw atypical contours and create complex geometric objects.

• 10 Drawing - Magnetic pen tool
  

  The Magnetic mode of the Freehand tool has become so popular that it is called the Magnetic Pen, although there is no such separate tool in Photoshop. What this function allows you to do, why users love it so much and how it will help you personally - read the article.

• 11 Image Retouching Tools
  

  To use these editor functions for the Internet, you don’t need to be a layout designer, a designer, a webmaster, or anyone at all. It is enough to be an active user of social networks. How to make your face more beautiful, remove moles and freckles? How to process an old scanned photo so that the colors become brighter, and scratches, stains and specks of dust are not so noticeable? How to carefully cut an object, move it or clone it? Where is the tool that will help you remove the red-eye effect from a photograph in just a couple of minutes? Find answers to these and other questions in the article.

• 12 Image correction tools
  

  You already know so much that learning new tools is not a problem. All I had to do was make a review describing the possibilities to improve the quality of pictures - lighten where it is too dark, darken where it is overexposed, blur and add sharpness, mix and smear colors. In general, additional information on how to make the image better awaits you in the lesson.

  The pinnacle of creativity for the web is drawing website templates. When you have mastered most of the tools, and have enough skills to draw dividers with shapes, buttons for menus, logos, and beautiful inscriptions, nothing prevents you from creating a good, complex layout. The article explains what a standard template consists of, describes the principle of creation, and also teaches how to cut the layout using tools previously unfamiliar to you.

By paying attention to each of the lessons, analyzing practical examples and experimenting on your own, as you master the course you will go from beginner to advanced user of Photoshop and will be able to go deeper into it yourself, moving to a new level of mastery, and a strong and reliable foundation will help you in this, laid down in the series of our articles.

From this issue we begin a detailed acquaintance with the best graphics package for photo processing - Photoshop CS. Let's start with the fundamental points, knowledge of which will guarantee your success in photo processing. Unfortunately, many photographers neglect these features, which leads to a significant waste of time and effort on work that could be done much easier and faster. This issue will be some introduction to the fascinating world of Photoshop and will allow you not to get unnecessary bumps along this long path.

The first axiom is working with adjustment layers.
What are they, what are they for and where are they located?
The fact is that photo processing (brightness, contrast, saturation and other adjustments) can be carried out directly on the source material, which is what many amateur photographers do. But if you do not use adjustment layers, the following problems arise:

1. During the work process, you cannot go back to previous adjustments and make any amendments to the changes you have made (and this is almost always necessary, especially if it is a large and complex job).

2. Even if you manage to return to this step (you have a lot of computer RAM, and the history palette is configured for a large number of steps), you will thereby undo all the subsequent changes you made with such difficulty.

3. You cannot change in a wide range the strength of the impact of the settings you have made for applying any filters. Applying adjustment layers eliminates all of the above and turns your work into fun. Therefore, accept the first rule for yourself - the original photo must remain untouched until the very last moment!

There are two ways to access the adjustment layers menu. Layer/New Adjustment Layer/desired layer or, more simply, a pictogram Create New fill or Adjustment Layer (see photo 1). Now let's take a closer look at the main representatives of this glorious instrument.

Levels
Photo processing begins with this layer. For example, let’s open in Photoshop a frame with a meadow stonechat sitting on a melilot stem (see photo 2).

Let's face it - the frame is very inexpressive. There may be many reasons for this, but we will not dwell on them, since we are unable to change them. We will work with the investigation. It is clear that the image has a very narrow dynamic range, which is clearly visible from the histogram of the tool Levels(levels). Let's expand our range in order to give our photo more richness. To do this, you can simply click on the button Auto and... get a completely “unexpected” result (see photo 3).

The photo took on an eerie purple hue. In fact, nothing unexpected happened, you just need to enable the histogram in the panel first Histogram by checking the boxes opposite All Channels View and Show Channels in Color (see photo 4).

It can be seen from the histograms that the blue color is significantly shifted relative to red and green, so when expanding the dynamic range, the program will try to equalize them, which will lead to the following consequences. This does not mean that you cannot use auto-correction at all. On well-balanced shots it often produces excellent results. Therefore, it is best to use manual adjustment in difficult cases. To do this, we will simply move the black and white level sliders to the beginning of the main histogram (see photo 5).
At the same time, we lost a small part of the information in the highlights (to the right of the white level slider), but this is not a problem, since we will return to them a little later (now, with the use of adjustment layers, this is not a problem for us). Our picture has already begun to look more beautiful, but we still have to work...

Selective Color
To do this, enable and edit the Selective Color layer. In this layer, we can selectively adjust the components of the primary colors and the color components of neutral shades (black, gray and white). To make it easier, I will post all the adjustments made separately in a layer Selective Color (see photo 6).

The remaining colors were left unchanged. The result is the following picture (see photo 7).
Of course, the strength of influence on a particular color depends on you and your tasks. If it seems that the saturation of the picture is too high, then you can apply a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

Eliminating overexposure
Now let's get back to recovering lost information in the lights. The enlarged fragment clearly shows that the throat area is overexposed, let's restore it in a form close to the original one. To do this, select the layer with levels, turn on the Brush drawing element (brush) with the B key, adjust the brush size with the [ and ] keys, and the hardness (blurring of boundaries) with the keys Shift + . Set the transparency of the brush to 30 percent by simply pressing the 3 key on the keyboard, and the painting color is black (see photo 8).
With light movements of the brush (it is very convenient in such cases to work with the pen of a Wacom graphics tablet), we will restore this fragment to the state we need. Each brush pass over one spot will return 30 percent of the original condition.

Cleaning the memory
Our history palette and RAM are quite full and need to be cleaned. It is advisable to have surgery before doing this. Snapshot(state snapshot), to do this, in the history palette, on the last operation, click the right mouse button and select from the pop-up menu New Snapshot. After creating a snapshot of the state, you can right-click and select Clear History. Is it possible to completely clear the RAM more radically and correctly? Edit/Purge/All.

Sharpening filters
Now you need to add clarity to your photos. Since sharpening cannot be applied to adjustment layers, and, as we already said, we are not working with the main image, we need to create a copy of our original image. This can be done in different ways. For example, selecting our original drawing in the Layers palette is always the bottom layer Background, then just click Ctrl+J or drag this layer to the icon with the mouse (see photo 9).

In general, the topic of increasing image clarity is a topic for a separate issue, since there are many methods for solving this very important issue. For now, I will tell you about the simplest photo processing techniques.
So, we have with you a copy of the main image called background copy, We will work with him. Photoshop has a special tool for sharpening - Unsharp Mask. It's on the menu Filter/Sharpen/Unsharp Mask. Let's open this filter (see photo 10).

This filter has three adjustment sliders.
Amount(impact strength) - set in the range from 0 to 500 percent.
Radius(radius) - set in the range from 0.1 to 250 pixels. This is the radius of effect of your filter. As a rule, you should not set its value to more than 5 (usually 1-3). Ultimately, it all depends on the specific tasks. You can see the effect for yourself.
Threshold(threshold) is a very important parameter that sets the brightness threshold of the filter’s effect (the effect will be applied to all adjacent pixels that have a brightness difference threshold greater than or equal to the set one). The lower this number, the more image elements will fall into the filter's area of ​​influence. Typically set in the range 1–10.
You can see the effect of using this filter in the picture. In this case, the picture looks a little overdone. This is also not very good. Basically, the effect of “sharpe” is very noticeable on the contours of the object in relation to the background. To eliminate the “oversharpening” effect, simply take the eraser (E key) and erase the outline in the image in those places where it is most noticeable (the lower part of the beak and the dark outline on the white neck in the previous image) (see photo 11).

In the same way, you need to carefully go through the entire image, if necessary, changing the transparency of the eraser in specific places.
Personally, I don’t really like this filter for subjective reasons, and I want to talk about another method. It's called High Pass(high pass filter). In my opinion, the effect of this filter is more intelligent in relation to photography and has more opportunities for creativity.
So, Filter/Other/High Pass. Set the parameter Radius in the range of 1.5–2.5. What happened to our picture? (See photo 12.)

Do not worry, everything will be OK! ...Or bad. This is dialectics! Let's change the blend mode from Normal on Soft Light. Oh miracle! I told you everything would be fine! (See photo 13.)
In this case, the strength of the filter can be smoothly changed using the Opacity slider. If you want to further enhance its effect, change the blending mode from Soft Light to Hard Light. Next we use the eraser as described above. We will return in more detail to the use of this and other sharpening filters in another issue of the magazine.

Blur filter
Another important and frequently used filter for photo processing, which I would like to talk about at the beginning of our journey, is Blur(blur). There are several varieties of this filter, but I want to focus on Gaussian Blur(Gaussian blur). Often, using this fairly simple tool gives a very good effect when you need to smooth out background elements, for example. They can mask “noise” in a photograph, add softness and mystery to the picture, and much more. To begin with, we’ll just get acquainted with its work on our bird. So, Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur.(Did you remember to create a copy of our main image again? Well done!) (See photo 14.)

Set the blur radius to 3 pixels. In general, in this filter this parameter can be set within very wide limits, depending on the required task. As you can see, the background has acquired a more even and beautiful appearance, although looking at the bird makes you want to wipe your glasses. So let's wipe them down. We take our familiar eraser and start wiping. In the center of the bird, you can set the size larger and the opacity to 100 percent, and as you get closer to the edges, reduce the size and set the transparency to about 30 percent. Make the eraser hardness (blurred boundaries) minimal and move on. There is no need to exactly repeat the contours of the object; it is advisable to slightly capture the background area at the transition border, then the picture will be more natural (that’s why we make higher transparency at the border). Then we will learn how to make a layer mask, which will make our work easier, but not all at once! And here is the result (see photo 15).

It’s quite good for a start, but imagine what it will be like later! Now we need to frame our picture correctly to improve its composition. If we have finished our photo processing, then all layers can and should be combined into one. Press Shift + Ctrl + E or Layer-Merge Visible (merge visible layers). Turn on Crop (trimming) with the C key on the keyboard and stretch the “elastic band” from the upper left to the lower right corner (see photo 16). If necessary, adjust the cropped fragment in accordance with our desires and preferences and press Enter.

Change of size
The physical size of the photo has decreased. We need to enlarge it to the size of an A4 printed sheet (for example).
Choose Image/Image Size. The most optimal image resolution option can be considered 300 dpi (dots per inch), which is perfect for printing in a minilab and for printing on a home printer. Next we set the size of our image. For A4 format, this, taking into account the margins, is approximately 20x28 cm. Therefore, depending on the aspect ratio of your photo, set one of the parameters (width or height), and the second will be set automatically. In this case, Constrain Proportions must be checked (preserve proportions), and the Resample Image conversion method must be set to the best quality Bicubic (bicubic) (see photo 17).

Sometimes, after resizing the image, it is desirable to perform a second sharpening operation, but its strength and necessity must be determined in each specific case. At this point, the lightweight version of photo processing can be considered complete. For most cases this is quite sufficient.